Filming Locations:

Company:

Did You Know?

Trivia:

The Red Pills known as Substance Death, a drug that alters a user's reality, bear a striking resemblance to the Red Pills given to the character Douglas Quaid in the film Total Recall (1990) that, in this instance, are used to bring Quaid out of the Rekall Memory Implant-induced reality.See more »

Goofs:

Factual errors: (at around 10 mins) Arctor's residence, on the computer screen, is shown as Anahiem, California, a misspelling of Anaheim. The associated zip code, 98345 is for Keyport, Washington.See more »

Quotes:

[first lines] Freck:[on the phone] I looked them up. They're aphids. They're in my hair, on my skin, in my lungs. And the pain, Barris, it's unreasonable. They're all over the place. Oh, they've completely gotten Millie too.See more »

I've never written a review on this site before, but since I've just
been at the first screening of this movie at Brandeis, I feel like
writing a few comments. First of all, visually this movie is
incredible. The roto-scoping is a vast improvement over Waking Life
(and that's on a crappy screen with the film only 95% completed.)
Despite the overall dark nature of the film, the dialogue is at times
hilarious, and at the screening the audience erupted into laughter
several times. Now, on to the story itself. I never read the Phillip K.
Dick novel, but from what I could tell, the movie stays faithful. This
is not a popcorn thriller; like I said, it is very dark. As the
producer Erwin Stoff said after the showing, the movie reflects the bad
experiences Dick had with drugs during his life. Apparently the
producers bought the rights to the book from Dick's daughters at a
reduced rate because they promised to be faithful to his vision, and I
could definitely see the effort that was put in in order to accomplish
that. Overall, I enjoyed this movie very much. Admittedly, it was hard
to follow at times. But, as with the other Linklater films that I have
seen, A Scanner Darkly is worth seeing for the interesting dialogue,
esoteric characters (especially Robert Downey Jr and Woody Harrelson,
who provide many of the films laughs), and stunning visuals. It is not
a plot-driven movie at all; the story as described in the IMDb summary,
which is more or less accurate, is just a framework from which to
express Dick's stark and angry vision of the ravages of drugs on
society. Those seeking visceral excitement will be disappointed, but
those looking for an intelligent, bleakly funny, dream-like, thought
provoking experience that is incredibly grim yet not entirely hopeless,
will be rewarded. A Scanner Darkly is definitely not for everybody,
because its pacing and animation style are not mainstream(the same is
true of its release schedule: only 4 theaters on July 7, 8 the next
week, and so on). However, for fans of Linklater and/or Dick, this is
no doubt a must see, and you should mark July 7th on your calendar.

Related Links

You may report errors and omissions on this page to the IMDb database managers. They will be examined and if approved will be included in a future update. Clicking the 'Edit page' button will take you through a step-by-step process.